A ‘Cooked Seed,’ she wasn’t

Author Anchee Min talks about new book

“The Cooked Seed,” Anchee Min’s new memoir, takes its title from a Chinese saying about someone whose prospects are dim. They are said to be a “cooked seed,” never to blossom.

Min blossomed a long time ago, first with the 1994 bestselling memoir “Red Azalea,” about growing up during the Cultural Revolution, and then with a half-dozen novels, including “Becoming Madame Mao” and “Empress Orchid.”

“The Cooked Seed” picks up where “Red Azalea” ended, with Min arriving in America to study art, learning to speak English by watching “Sesame Street,” and working five jobs to make enough money for survival.

It’s a harrowing immigrant’s story of deprivation and hardship, even rape, but also one of dreams that come true: a writing career, a daughter, a sense of belonging in her new country.

Min will be at Warwick’s Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

Q: Why did you decide to write another memoir?

A: I just couldn’t help it. I guess it came from all directions, from being an immigrant, from being a mother dealing with an American kid, my own transformation from a Chinese woman into an American, and my relationship with my mother and her death — they all pointed me toward writing this book. Eventually I think it was my daughter who said, “If you want to leave me anything, you leave me your true story. I don’t want a sugarcoated or airbrushed version.”

Q: There are a lot of painful experiences in the book. Was it hard to pull up those memories and put them on the page?

A: Yes. It was the easiest book and the hardest book to write. The easiest is because this time I didn’t have to do any research, like I did for my novels. It was the hardest because with some of the chapters, I wrote, and the next urge was to delete it all immediately.

Q: Why?

A: I think it has to do with my roots as a Chinese woman. Twenty-seven years growing up there, raised and molded and conditioned, brainwashed in a way, by the culture and the society. This inbuilt shame and guilt. But the American in me spoke up and I would fight that thing. I was OK for a moment. But then it would just go back and forth, back and forth. It was the fight inside that was tough.

Q: Tell me about the title. Was this a phrase you heard a lot growing up?

A: It started from my grandmother. Her way of using it is from the villages, “You’re cooked seeds.” You don’t have a chance to sprout. In China, the people just know. When they say you don’t have a chance, then they call you a cooked seed.

Q: When did you first realize that wasn’t true about yourself, that you did have a chance?

A: I think it was in America. The first moment was when I realized I could actually learn English on my own. Another moment was when I was working in a restaurant and I witnessed the boss harassing one of the other waitresses and I realized I could say, “I quit.” Just gradually warming up to the thought that I actually have options. Realizing, Gee, I actually have some power.